


see tomorrow past tonight

by restlesslikeme



Series: ribs verse [2]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, Eddie Kaspbrak Loves Richie Tozier, Fix-It, Gay Eddie Kaspbrak, Happy Ending, M/M, Moving In Together, on god we gon get you some therapy bro, they're both gay in this series this one just deals with eddie's identity specifically, will add tags as fic updates, working through trauma stuff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-10
Updated: 2019-11-14
Packaged: 2021-01-27 07:28:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21388375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/restlesslikeme/pseuds/restlesslikeme
Summary: “Are you going to be like this the entire time we’re home?” Eddie says -- we, as if Richie did call him when they left Derry the last time. We, like his life took a left instead of a right, and Eddie finally made it out west the way he was supposed to twice before.We, we, we, like he’s been saying it his whole damn life.--Or:After the Losers defeat Pennywise, Eddie goes home to California with Richie. Now what?
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Series: ribs verse [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1525508
Comments: 16
Kudos: 89





	1. prologue

**Author's Note:**

> this is a direct companion piece to _not enough to feel the lack_ and unlike the wedding fic in this series, this one won't make a lot of sense as a standalone. 
> 
> aiming for three parts for this story, and i will update author's notes once it's complete. 
> 
> thank you for reading!

  
  
  
  


In a chinese restaurant that he only remembered existed all of fifteen minutes ago, Eddie Kaspbrak experiences what can probably be described as a mid life crisis.

He makes eye contact with Richie from across the room, and his heart drops to his stomach. Seeing Mike and Bill had been different -- he could find the kids he knew hidden away in their features, but he hadn’t recognized the adults in a way that meant he knew them. That was odd in enough in itself, knowing them without really knowing them. The surge of love that had hit him so unexpectedly. 

But Richie --

Richie sits at the table and does shots without using his hands. Eddie tries not to watch the way his throat moves when he gulps them down, and the anxiety of realizing that he’s doing that mostly just pisses him off. He pretends the heat on the back of his neck is irritation, drinks his water to try and help the the way his mouth has dried up. 

Richie looks him in the dead in the eye with an expression that Eddie can’t really read, says: _ What, to like a woman? _ and Eddie can’t tell what that means either, but he feels like it’s a dig so he curses him out instead of asking.

That’s always been easier. 

On his other side, Ben laughs, and Eddie can see the little boy he used to know in the way his eyes crinkle at the sides. For Beverly it’s her voice, so kind, with the same kind of lilts he can remember, watching the rest of them with unabashed affection.

But Richie -- Richie clasps his hand for an arm wrestle, and Eddie knows him, this way, as an adult instead of as a kid he forgot thirty years ago. Richie looks at him in this soft, sad way, and Eddie knows that too. 

He realizes, with sudden, terrifying clarity, that if Richie leaned across the table and pressed their mouths together the way he so obviously wants to, Eddie would already know what that feels like.

He’s got no fucking idea what to do with that information.

\--

The longer he’s in Derry, the more of it comes back. He walks down the main strip and he can feel Richie’s hand on his face, across the booth of a little western bar that’s now been renovated into a pizza chain. Every time he sees Richie in the Townhouse, he half expects to be grabbed at, or for Richie to offer him food, coffee, a hand with something. Little gestures leading up to something bigger. 

Richie shoots him a smile as they pass each other on the stairs, and he remembers how Richie smelled, clutching him close in a half lit parking lot after Eddie buried his mother. 

Ten years has made Richie a little softer, a little sadder, and there are more greys in his hair than Eddie remembers from the last time he sunk his fingers into it.

Guiltily, he itches to do it again. The years have had an opposite effect on him: sometimes Eddie feels like a hard, straight line, with no softness or give to his name. He wants to remember a time when he bent more easily, and that just makes him think of Richie too. 

He doesn’t say any of this to anyone. Neither does Richie, which Eddie takes as confirmation that he doesn’t remember jack shit about it. Richie has never exactly been subtle, after all -- Eddie’s been pretty sure of certain things since he was about fourteen years old, although neither of them were ever brave enough to voice it. 

He thinks that if Richie remembered what he’s starting to figure out, he would eventually fuck up and broach the subject, in his own stupid way. He would say something, even as a joke, and they would be forced to confront that little pocket of time the rest of the losers weren’t privy to. 

It doesn’t happen, and instead Richie just keeps looking at him. He doesn’t touch him, but he does continue to make an ass of himself trying to piss Eddie off, which works and probably amounts to the same thing. 

His phone’s been lighting up ever since Eddie got off the plane in Bangor. He doesn’t answer it, because the more Richie stares, the more Eddie gets this nagging, panic inducing feeling that the next time he takes Myra’s call might be the last time. 

He’s not entirely ready to blow his entire fucking life up just yet. Not quite. 

\--

He fucks up once, in the clubhouse, watching Richie do that stupid fucking clown dance, wondering how he doesn’t bash his big head off the ceiling. He’s too tall for the space, all hunched down and hunched in; he’s as annoying as he ever has been, even if he’s five times the size. A surge of affection hits Eddie right in the chest, settling in like its had a home there all along.

In a way it did, even if the place has been sitting vacant for awhile.

“Are you going to be like this the entire time we’re home?” Eddie says -- _ we _ , as if Richie did call him when they left Derry the last time. _ We, _like his life took a left instead of a right, and Eddie finally made it out west the way he was supposed to twice before.

We, we, we, like he’s been saying it his whole damn life.

No one else seems to realize it. It rolls off Richie’s back without a reaction, and Eddie is left feeling like his tongue is too big for his mouth. 

Then they’re talking about Stan, and Eddie is realizing how much he’s missed out on. He’s thinking about Patty Uris and wondering -- hoping -- that Stan was happy, in the 27 years that he was free of this place. If their positions were reversed, would he be able to say that he was? 

When Eddie looks at Richie, Richie’s eyes look wet, and he knows that they’re thinking the same thing.

Shit. 

\--

While the others scatter across town to find tokens, Eddie goes back to the townhouse first. He sits on a bed that he remembers sharing with Richie a decade prior, and clicks onto Myra’s contact, staring at the phone in his hand.

He tries to think about the times he’s been really, fully happy in his adult life, and finds that the list is short and lonely. He thinks that maybe he’d forgotten what that felt like when he’d forgotten the rest of it. Losing it completely had meant that he didn’t know what he was missing, and being with his friends has filled him back up with it, reintroduced him to the concept. Like riding a bike for the first time in years.

It seems wrong for Stan to die just for Eddie to keep pretending he doesn’t know any better. For him to not try and grab the handlebars again. 

He thinks about the sad way Richie looks at him, about the warmth of Richie’s hand around his. He thinks about how it had felt to kiss Richie that first time in his old bedroom, how he couldn’t stop smiling, how it had felt like his whole body was lit up with it. He thinks maybe that’s how it’s supposed to feel, and wonders why he ever stopped reaching for that.

He calls Myra.

\--

In the cistern, with adrenaline pumping through his veins, Richie is slowly coming to life underneath him. He climbs ontop of him because he just fucking _ killed a monster _ \-- he thinks he can probably do anything. His chest feels like it might fucking burst from how hard his heart is beating, and he can barely keep track of what he’s saying.

He killed it. He fucking killed it.

On the ground, Richie blinks up at him from behind the thick lenses of his glasses. He wets his lips and sort of dazedly reaches forward --

_ Be brave, motherfucker, _ Eddie thinks, and he’s not sure which of them he’s talking to. _ Be brave -- _

And then Richie’s hands are gripping the top of his arms and pulling, rolling them over, and Eddie’s entire body is on fire with pain. He can feel blood spreading through his shirt, wet and warm and overwhelming, and distantly he can hear Richie’s voice saying his name as they stumble through the caves. 

He wants to tell him, then, with his head propped up against a rock and Richie’s jacket pressed to his bleeding body. Dizzily, he thinks that it might be his only chance, since if the blood loss doesn’t kill him then the bacteria these slimy walls are crawling with certainly will. He just swam through sewage water with an open wound, for fuck’s sake, if he had a mirror he’s sure he’d be oozing disease. Through the haze of his body going into shock, that makes him think of the Leper, choking and shrinking under his grip --

So small, and powerless. A reflection of what this shit has been doing to them forever, even after they left Derry behind. 

He manages that part at least, looking Mike directly in the eye so that he’ll understand. So that they’ll have a chance, even if Eddie doesn’t. It seems more important, even as his vision starts to go blurry and he feels sadness, bottomless and overwhelming, well up inside him. Even if Eddie doesn’t get out of here to sort his life out, he can make sure that the rest of them do. 

Then he blacks out. 

  
  


\--

  
  


Somehow, he doesn’t die of sepsis. At least he doesn’t think he does -- the hospital room he wakes up in is bright white enough to hurt his eyes, and smells like antiseptic. It would kind of figure that that’s what heaven looks like: sterile. He thinks his mom might like that. Thinking about his mom while he’s fucked up on pain medication threatens to make him cry while the doctor is trying to describe what’s going on, so he immediately tries to find something else to distract himself. 

He finds that if he leans just right, he can see the top of Richie’s head through the little rectangular window set in the middle of the door to the room. Eddie stares over the doctor’s shoulder and focuses on that instead; a mess of brown curls, the reassurance that Richie is sitting directly on the other side of the wall waiting for him.

Which is only fucking fair, he thinks, now that he remembers how many times he was waiting around on Richie. 

\--

He decides he isn’t going to wait this time.

“I left my wife,” Eddie says, and he knows that they’re going to have to unpack all of this later, knows that one phone call is just the beginning of a whole slew of shit that makes up a divorce. He knows that there’s more to it than that. He’s been in love with Richie for probably his whole life, but Richie is not the crux of his entire identity. Even without Richie Tozier, he would still be a gay man, extracating himself from the mess of a life he thought he needed to have. 

He wonders if that’s the first time he’s thought of himself that way, with that kind of unflinching clarity. He tries not to think about his mom again.

For now, he takes satisfaction in the way that Richie is gaping at him. There’s a grin that wants to start in the corner of his mouth, and he smothers it down in favour of giving Richie shit with a straight face. He can’t think of anything he’d like more than to sit back stage at a show and know that Richie will find him, at the end of it. He thinks he could probably listen to Richie’s shitty jokes for the rest of his life.

Richie’s hand is warm around his cold one, steadying and a little desperate.

When Richie finally, finally, finally kisses him, it feels like Eddie is taking a breath of clean air for the very first time. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	2. Chapter 2

  
  
  


There are multiple things that have struck Eddie since his impromptu stay at Richie’s apartment started. He likes the California air for one; for some reason, Eddie had always thought it would be the opposite. He’d always taken some perverse pleasure in complaining about the weather in New York, and he’d been worried that California would feel empty without that specific battle. Instead, he has to begrudgingly admit that Richie is right about some things.

For another thing, Richie’s penthouse is nice. It’s cleaner than Eddie would have figured it’d be, and a little bit more grown up, taste-wise, in a way that makes Eddie wonder if he just hired someone to do all the interior designing for him. That’s an odd thought; there’s a lot about Richie that he doesn’t really know, when it comes down to the bone. Richie has an entire life here that Eddie’s got no real context for, or place in.

His lack of a personal life for the last few decades is paying off; Eddie has rarely taken vacation, rarely, despite what anyone might assume, called out sick from work. His job had been something easy to throw himself into, something to be proud of and to keep busy with, a supplement for anything of any real substance in his life. When he calls the firm to explain that he needs to extend his leave of absence -- no, he’s not sure how long yet -- his squeaky clean record means that he’s taken seriously. 

The hospital reports from Derry that he forwards over probably help, too. He did nearly die. They send him some portfolios he can work on remotely, and ask him to check in a couple of times a week.

The benefits of being a corporate shill, he supposes.

Even though Richie has been more than explicit about how Eddie should make himself at home, Eddie feels like there’s a gap he can’t close. He still putters around like a guest in Richie’s home, and while he sets his luggage up in the appropriate corners of the bedroom and forces Richie to add another blanket to the bed, he doesn’t make any other lasting impression on the place.

Not for a lack of effort on  _ Richie’s  _ part. Maybe it had been stupid to assume that a lifetime of being closeted would make Richie a little more tentative about this stuff, but Eddie is quickly finding out that that isn’t the case. So far Richie has either cooked or ordered in breakfast every day this week. He keeps asking Eddie if he likes weird shit about the apartment, like the color of his couch cushions (inoffensive), or the brand of hand soap he uses in the bathroom (awful). Of all the ways he might have thought Richie would piss him off staying together, being overly-attentive absolutely would not have been the one he was worried about.

It would almost be endearing, if Eddie wasn’t the one on the receiving end of it. As it is, the constant attention is starting to make Eddie feel suffocated -- a subject that Eddie has a fucking honorary PhD on, at this point in his life. He wants to be able to enjoy this more, but instead as the days go by, the pressure looming in the distance just seems to get heavier. Richie’s apartment. Richie’s life. All the shit he’s running away from back east.

Elbows deep in meticulously packed suitcases, Eddie represses the urge to start a tirade. He’s gone through them three times now, and turns up with nothing, and each scan of his menagerie of baggage makes him more and more frantic. 

Sensing, or maybe hearing, his panic, Richie pokes his head in: his toothbrush hanging from the corner of his mouth. “What? You looking for your dignity in there or something? You won’t find it.”

“Not funny,” Eddie replies shortly, one hand abandoning its search to make a firm cut in the air. “I’m looking for my floss. Which should be in my toiletries bag, which also seems to have mysteriously disappeared since last night.”

“Wait, your floss?” Richie’s mouth is half full of toothpaste, making him near a mumble. He jabs a thumb towards the bathroom. “I put it by the sink. I put all your stuff in there.” 

Eddie pauses, and when he lifts his head to regard Richie fully, his stomach tightens. “You moved my stuff?” 

“Uh, yeah, dude,” Richie says dryly. “You’re welcome. Instead of living out of your suitcase and going back and forth like a tiger pacing at a zoo I figured maybe you’d want all your shit in one place.” 

“You can’t just --  _ assume _ and touch my stuff!” 

“I can’t assume that your bag full of exclusively bathroom related material belongs in the bathroom?” 

“That’s not--” Eddie’s skin heats. “That’s not what I mean, asshole.”

He knows that he’s being unreasonable. It isn’t even something he knows  _ deep down, _ it’s right at the forefront of his mind, tsking at him with the same tone that Richie is staring at him with right now. Still, he can’t help it; misplaced frustration is making him itchy.

“I had everything organized a certain way,” he mutters crossly, glancing up to see that the room is empty. After a second Richie steps back into frame, toothbrush gone, and he wipes toothpaste away from his mouth on the back of his hand. It’s disgusting, Eddie thinks, over a pang of endearment.

“Here, you little psycho,” Richie says, tossing the little plastic box of floss onto the bed. “I promise I’m not trying to steal all your shit. I just thought it might be helpful to have stuff placed appropriately since you essentially live here now.”

Again, that same tightening in Eddie’s stomach. It’s been a week since they got back to Richie’s place, and they haven’t talked about it at all. Richie keeps dancing around it, like if he touches something just right it might spur Eddie into being the one to start the conversation. 

“Rich,” Eddie starts, taking the bait partially out of guilt for snapping at him a few minutes ago. He sits down on the bed, looking up reluctantly at where Richie is watching him from the doorway. “You know I -- I have to go back to New York eventually, right? Probably sooner than later.”

He hates the way that Richie’s face falls, just for a fraction of a second before he catches himself and puts on a goofy grin in its place.

“Bullshit,” Richie says. “You love L.A.”

Eddie... doesn’t mind LA. He’s been taking walks in the evenings to clear his head, and despite the fact that he’s still very much in the middle of a city, he doesn’t come home with the same grimey, claustrophobic feeling that walking around New York always left him with. He likes seeing the sun come up over the palm trees in the morning on Richie’s balcony. Maybe it’s just the novelty of the whole thing, but he feels safe here, like he’s finally been slotted in somewhere that fits.

The thought scares him a little bit, so he’s been trying to avoid lingering on it. Which is a pretty succinct summary of his feelings about all of this, really. 

“I have a job,” Eddie counters reluctantly. “I’m still married. The longer I bum around your apartment avoiding that, the more all of this shit just piles up. Besides, we don’t even -- know if we’re any good at this, Richie, we’ve remembered each other for like a grand total of maybe a month, at this point. Doesn’t that kind of freak you the fuck out?”

“They don’t do divorces online these days?” Richie snorts, pointedly avoiding the rest of Eddie’s statement. “No one takes marriage seriously anymore anyways, it seems like the least they could do. Shit, you can get  _ married _ in like five minutes in Vegas, you can’t just --” 

“Richie.”

Richie falls silent, tucking his hands up underneath his armpits and hunching himself down subconsciously. He always does that when he’s upset about something and embarrassed about being upset, Eddie has noticed. He’s been paying a lot of attention to Richie lately, trying to let himself get used to being allowed to do it. He still hasn’t entirely convinced the repressed part of his stupid brain, and every now and then it comes with a reflexive wash of shame.

Eddie sighs, trying to sort through the buzzing that’s been in his head for the last four days, and wants to make him pissy. 

“Would you quit being a baby,” he says, pinching the bridge of his nose while Richie stands awkwardly across the room. “Stop sulking, you look like a fucking pound puppy. I’m just -- I’m just saying, that’s not how shit works in the real world. I can’t just have all my stuff shipped over here and forget about it, I’ve got like. I’ve got a life, you know, even if it was kind of a shitty one.”

The mattress next to him dips as Richie sets himself down next to Eddie on the bed. A little awkwardly, Eddie leans over, letting his head fall sideways onto Richie’s shoulder.

“It couldn’t have been all bad,” Richie offers. “I don’t know, Eds, you seemed so put together when we met up before. I remember I was still so fucking anxious about everything, and you just... went for it. You were like that when we were kids, too, you just like -- you decide to do something and then you do it.”

For a second, Eddie doesn’t have anything to say to that. It’s so far removed from how he thinks of himself that he almost wonders if Richie is fucking with him again. Is that how Richie sees him? Brave and decisive? The thought makes the back of his neck burn.

“That... doesn’t sound like me,” he admits finally, pressing his lips into a thin line. “Are you fucking kidding me? I’ve spent my whole life doing shit just because someone else told me I should. My mom. Myra. Hell, the only reason I even went to college is because you didn’t ask me to come out here with you instead. How fucking pathetic is that?”

It sits between them for a minute, this weird dissonance between who Eddie thinks he is and who Richie sees. From the corner of his eye, he watches as Richie picks at the bedspread, frowning.

“Is that why you’re here now?” Richie asks abruptly. “Because I told you to come? Because Eds, I’m not that serious about the whole west coast thing you know, if you want to go back to New York, I’ll start packing my shit right now, I --”

Eddie reaches up, flicking him in the side of the head with a scowl.

“No, dumbass. I wanted to come with you, I just -- we need to pump the brakes a little, is all I’m saying. And I’m going to need to go home to sort all this shit out, like I’m going to have to go to court.”

“Okay,” Richie answers seriously, nodding like the big dumb softie he is. Eddie’s chest aches a little. “Okay, I can do that. Consider the brakes pumped.”

“And stop looking at me like that,” Eddie adds, jostling his shoulder. “You’re not being nearly enough of an asshole, and it’s weirding me out. If you’re going to suddenly turn into some old sap, I’m calling this whole thing off. Get some balls, Tozier.”

“That’s bold coming from you,” Richie quips back immediately. “Since you just admitted to handing yours off to any woman who’s ever used a stern voice in your direction.”

Eddie can’t help but grin.

“Here, m’lady,” Richie continues, veering right into a Voice at the first sign of encouragement. “My balls, m’lady --”

“Alright,” Eddie cuts him off sharply. “That’s enough! I take it back.”

Richie just laughs.

\--

Eddie books an Airbnb a relatively short stint away from his office. In a weird way, he finds he’s sad to leave California so soon, despite the fact that he shouldn’t have any attachment to it yet and should realistically be relieved to be going back to the city that’s been his hometown for the last twenty odd years. Still, something melancholy swoops into his chest as he boards the plane, Richie trailing right behind him into first class without touching him.

They’ve agreed on some ground rules; one of those is that they’ll keep this between them for just a little while longer, Losers notwithstanding. While Eddie can swoop easily under the radar, Richie is technically a public figure. It won’t be forever, but they’ve both got enough on their plates without some gossip rag trying to cash in on Richie Tozier’s new boyfriend’s divorce proceedings.

“Hey, you picked some pretty sweet digs Eddie Spaghetti,” Richie says, giving a low whistle as they let themselves into the rented condo. 

Glancing around, Eddie has to agree, even if being back in the city is giving him the weird sensation of walking backwards. In a way he’s a little embarrassed to have Richie back here with him at all; it feels like a lifetime since he left, like he’s not the same person he was when he headed out for Derry. Killing a cosmic clown will do that, he supposes. 

“You’re sure you aren’t going to get in shit for blowing off those shows?” Eddie asks, setting his bags down in the foyer. “If you have to go on the road, it’s fine. Like, I’ll manage, if it’s a big deal.”

“Who’s going to serve your wife divorce papers if I’m in fucking Reno?” Richie asks, wandering into the livingroom and tossing his lanky body down onto the sofa. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

“You’re not serving anyone anything,” Eddie reminds firmly. “You’re here strictly for moral support, Richie, I mean it.”

There’s a huff from the direction of the livingroom, and Eddie rolls his eyes to himself. He’s a little grateful to have Richie here acting like a dumbass, if he’s being honest. It does sort of keep him from hyper fixating on all the shit that’s going to go down in the next little while, all the change he’s going to have to single handedly wreak over his own life and over Myra’s.

That sits in the back of his mind, guiltily. 

Pushing the thought aside, he follows to the livingroom.

“Move it,” Eddie says, climbing up and squirming his way between Richie’s body and the back of the sofa. It digs up a memory -- the couch in Richie’s parents’ basement, pressing himself lengthwise against Richie’s body after a fight with his mom. The sound of Richie’s breathing against his cheek, and Richie’s bony-ass chest under his arm. 

“Ow, Jesus” Richie complains, but he wraps an arm around him anyways, and Eddie huffs out a breath. It’s familiar, and he lets himself be comforted by that.

“I’m, uh, nervous, man,” Eddie admits, pressing his face down against Richie’s shirt. He makes a face: “Ugh, you stink. How much did you sweat during that flight?”

“Like a hog,” Richie replies contendly. “And yeah, I bet. Does she know you’re back in town?”

Eddie nods, his forehead brushing Richie’s shoulder.

“Yeah we’re going to meet up tomorrow and talk about stuff,” he mumbles. “I feel shitty about it. Like I know I’m doing the right thing, I just -- I wasted a lot of her time. I feel like I was lying. It feels shitty.”

“Yeah,” Richie says, tightening his arm around Eddie’s middle. They’re both quiet for a minute, and Eddie listens to the distant hum of cars outside the window. He’ll be back in the office in a couple of days, because there’s no point in not working while he’s here in limbo, and he tries to focus on that.

“Hey Eds?” Richie says after a few minutes, once the silence has stretched on and Eddie’s tried to move his brain to risk statistics and premiums. He hums in acknowledgement. “Why did you, uh -- why did you get married? Like how did that... I feel like there’s this big gap of your life that I don’t even know anything about.”

Eddie grimaces. He’d been expecting this -- it was part of the embarrassment, like Richie digging through his old baby pictures.

“Are you asking for real?” he props himself up on an elbow, raising his eyebrows at Richie at close range. “Or are you just going to be a dick?”

“Real.”

He’s not sure whether that’s better or worse. The teasing is always safer -- these moments of sincere vulnerability are still new ground for both of them, and a lot of the time even if he  _ wants  _ to talk to Richie about this stuff, dredging it up feels hard to manage. 

“We met through my job,” Eddie says, trying anyways. “Myra worked in the office of one of our clients. It was about a year after I came home from Derry the second time,” he says, clearing his throat. “When my mom died. I hadn’t really dated --”

“Except for me,” Richie points out. “ _ Technically _ , we never broke up, so --”

“That was like, what, three days? I’m not having this argument again, it absolutely does not qualify as cheating on you if Derry wiped my brain. Besides,  _ you  _ were supposed to call  _ me. _ ”

“Mmm, debatable,” Richie says. “But continue.”

“ _ As _ I was saying,” Eddie continues sharply. “I hadn’t really dated much. But I could tell that she liked me, she was always asking after me when I came in for meetings, and fussing over like -- if I was dressed for the weather. And at the time I thought that was nice, you know, which is funny because I hate that shit. I think it was just... familiar. It felt like I was supposed to go along with it, so I did.”

Richie seems to absorb that silently for a moment.

“I don’t know, man,” Eddie continues, rubbing his face tiredly. He suddenly feels self conscious about it. “I felt really fucking alone in the world, and then it was like the universe put this in front of me like:  _ here’s the life your mom wanted for you! Here’s what you’re supposed to do, Eds!  _ You know?”

“Didn’t it bother you?” Richie says, frowning. “That it didn’t feel, like -- I mean I tried that whole schtick for a little while, but I couldn’t get myself past feeling like I was faking it, so I just quit altogether. Fuck it. I’d rather be fucking miserable alone.”

“I thought I was just reaching for too much,” Eddie admits. “I had a good job, I had a wife and a house. That’s the shit people want, so who the fuck was I to turn my nose up at it? I don’t know. I wasn’t happy, but...”

He trails off, sighing as he lets his head drop down again. Tucking his face under Richie’s chin, Eddie closes his eyes.

“I didn’t really know what I was missing until I came back to Derry and saw all you guys again. Before that being happy didn’t seem worth the trouble.”

Above him, Richie lets out a huff of an exhale against Eddie’s hair. It feels warm against his scalp, and Eddie tries to focus on that, on how it makes him feel to be so obnoxiously tangled up with someone else. With Richie.

“That fucking town really fucked us up, huh,” Richie mumbles. 

“I think it was more than just Derry,” Eddie replies quietly. “But yeah. It didn’t help.”

It’s dark outside, and distantly Eddie thinks that they should be moving to the bed. His shoulder’s going to absolutely kill him tomorrow if he falls asleep here, as tempting as it is with Richie so warm underneath him.

“We should move,” he says, shifting just enough to prod a finger against the softness of Richie’s side. Without opening his eyes, Richie makes a wounded expression, and a swell of fondness comes over him. “C’mon Rich. You’re too old, you’ll be creaky as shit in the morning.”

As they fumble up off the couch, Eddie catches Richie’s hand in his, threading their fingers together to pull him towards the bedroom.

“Now who’s getting soft, bitch,” Richie grins.

“I’m just exhausted and you’re slow,” Eddie argues. “If I didn’t drag your ass, you’d be meandering out here for another fucking hour. Let’s go.”

Still, when Richie steps into the bedroom with him, Eddie can’t help but pull him in for a kiss. 

It’ll be worth it, he thinks, as Richie sighs contentedly against his mouth and leans their bodies together. To try and let himself be happy. It'll be worth it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading! i added another chapter because i'm a bit clearer on what i'm doing with this, and i have some more stuff to add than originally planned. hope you're enjoying so far!! <3
> 
> twitter: @unfinishedduet  
tumblr: @richtoziers

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! this won't be as long as not enough to feel the lack, so i'll probably update weekly instead of twice a week (since there are less parts). this is my first time switching to eddie perspective, so i hope i am doing him justice!
> 
> i answer comments frequently on here, so always feel free to babble at me ♥️
> 
> come find me:
> 
> twitter - @unfinishedduet  
tumblr - @richtoziers


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